THERE IS OFTEN A SPECIFIC DIFFICULTY to combat in grieving, and that difficulty is our attitude.
Changing our attitudes about grief and the grieving process is hard. Even if you want to change your attitude, behavior and grief language (see last week’s post), your family members and friends may resist.
It’s important to examine our beliefs about grief—what good grieving looks like, how you talk about it and address it. I’ve had to examine and reshape my grief attitudes.
Change is often difficult.
But it can be critical to your grief recovery.
Having a safe space to grieve and express yourself—
You need to feel safe and may find grieving and grief recovery/completion is best done in a group of like-minded, understanding people. People who are also walking a similar path you’re on, or those who can walk beside you to help you in the process.
Old, stifling ideas about grief may be holding you back. It may take someone with experience and training, looking in from the outside to help you recognize where change should and can occur.
As the experts at the Grief Recovery Institute remind us:
“It is very easy to do things just the way we have always done them. But traditions generally signify familiarity, not always value.
“…even very willing people sometimes cling to old, ineffective ideas. It may be a struggle for you to let different and better information in.”
Evaluating what you’ve been taught about grief—
From a young age we’re usually given wrong, often detrimental signals and instructions about how to deal with grief and sadness. These lessons or signals can affect us the rest of our lives and make future, successful grieving difficult or impossible.
Some of us grew up in environments where our families tolerated few if any human feelings or outward expression of emotions. And now that we’re adults, our siblings and family members may still balk at or reject our need to self-express.
Those experiences can permanently color your world, and often not with a pleasing palette.
You need to paint your own grief picture—with your own emotions.
Tell your own story.
You’re the protagonist in it, and you—not others—need to provide the ending.
Make grief personal—
To complete your grieving, you’ll want to communicate your wants, your needs, your thoughts and your feelings. Not what you think someone else wants you to feel, or what someone else has told you to feel, but honestly communicate what’s going on in your mind and heart.
It’s not about feeling dumb or smart. It’s about tuning into your sadness, your joy, your deepest emotions and being able to express them. Working through the intricacies of the loss. Weaving a unique and complete tapestry.
Learning to identify and communicate your individual, positive or negative feeling and then moving on to uncovering, identifying and dealing with the next one.
You can’t move on to the next feeling if you haven’t dealt sufficiently with the one that came before it.
The danger of ignoring and suppressing emotions—
We often think ignoring an emotion will make it disappear and stop bothering us.
Unfortunately, that’s not what usually happens. The brain remembers, and the body keeps the score.
Suppressing your emotions can lead to a build up that eventually gets unloaded like a pressure cooker erupting and scalding everyone around it.
And when you don’t allow others to express their emotions, you’re likely to be the one getting scalded.
Another danger of suppressing sad emotions is all the energy it takes to do it. It’s hard on the physical body to keep them suppressed. And all that suppression often ends up putting pressure on your physical body. The stress causes chronic inflammation that can lead to devastating illness—both mental and physical.
Don’t be afraid of emoting with tears—
Ever heard a parent say this to a child? “I can’t understand you when you’re crying. Stop crying so I can hear you.” (I’m cringing because I’m sure I’ve said it to my kids at least once.)
While it may be true that the parent is unable to understand a child’s speech through the crying, a child probably interprets a different way—that it’s not okay to cry when expressing emotion.
So, the first thing you remember as a grieving adult is: I shouldn’t cry while sharing my emotions with someone. It’s a sign of weakness, and they probably won’t like it.
But in order to successfully and comfortably express your grief emotions, it’s important that you not feel judged; and that you do not give the impression of judging others when they’re expressing their personal emotions.
One last thought—
Before we leave today’s session, I want to leave you with one last thought from the Grief Recovery Institute, which expresses all we’ve addressed in this and previous posts:
“Unresolved grief is cumulative and cumulatively negative. Unresolved grief does not go away by the counterproductive nonactions of trying not to fee bad or by replacing the loss or by grieving alone or by being strong or by keeping busy or by the passage of time.”
All the things we’ve likely learned along life’s way need to be changed.
The question is: Are you ready to complete your grief healing?
Invitation—
I invite you to answer and work through the following questions:
What kind of family dynamics, training or signals affected your emotions? The way they/you handled loss?
Can you identify any loss you haven’t fully grieved, or any uncompleted/unresolved grief?
In regard to that grief, what emotions did you have that you didn’t express or didn’t feel you were allowed to express?
If you wanted to cry and didn’t, why not? Who or what stopped you? Would you feel comfortable crying now, even if the loss happened years ago?
NEXT WEEK we’ll explore the many short-term behaviors we resort to in grief that temporarily relieve our grieving emotions and energy. You won’t want to miss it!
Until then, open yourself to a new attitude toward loss and grieving. Give yourself and others the space needed to resolve grief.
Blessings,
Andrea
Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer and senior-ordained chaplain. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to thrive — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
HAS ANYONE ever said to you that you don’t seem as though you’ve finished grieving yet? Have you ever felt that way years after a loss?
Perhaps what they really mean to say is that you’re experiencing incomplete grief.
What is the real goal of grieving?
Many of us think the goal of grieving is to experience deep, painful emotions and finally arrive at the point where they aren’t as noticeable or don’t bother us as much as they did when the loss was fresh. A point where we feel as though we can get back to some kind of normal life.
But is that really the point of grieving?
It is. And it isn’t.
The point and task of grieving are to first grieve, feel all those emotions, and then complete the relationship with all the unfinished emotions you had when the relationship ended or the loss occurred.
You can think of it as unfinished business that niggles your brain and causes frustration or regret.
While grieving occurs automatically, completing the grief—or grief completion—results from specific actions you take to make that happen.
Well-meaning but bad grief advice—
You’ve probably heard someone say, “It’s best not to dwell on the past.” Or “Better let bygones be bygones.”
They sound like good practices, but in the long run they can be dangerous.
Why?
Because the human mind functions in a very different and specific way than the human heart. And vice versa.
The human mind tends to hang onto and replay what ifs—what could or should have been different, better or more. And those different, better and more thoughts can devour us emotionally, year after year after year.
It’s natural for us to do this. And where grief is concerned, it’s better to go along with that persistent brain, answer those questions, and take some steps to complete the thought and the revelations that come with it.
Incomplete grief can be about good things too—
As the experts at The Grief Recovery Institute note:
“Incomplete grief exists when there are any undelivered communications of an emotional nature.”
With that definition, you can easily see how incomplete grief can come from both good and bad events. They can be positive or negative.
For example: Let’s say you received a gift from a special friend and written and mailed a thank you note. But the morning after mailing the card, you learn your friend has died of a stroke. Besides the pain of losing a good friend, what feelings would you have about the loss?
One thought probably replaying over and over in your mind is that you wish your friend had known just how much you appreciated her gift. And now she’ll never know. Something has been left unfinished. And it hurts.
What if the last thing your spouse heard before driving off to work and getting killed in an auto accident was your snippy comment about something he did that morning that irked you? You would likely chastise yourself repeatedly over your unloving last words. Replay what you should have said to him; wish you could have apologized.
As Grief Recovery Institute experts point out:
“As a generality, undelivered emotional communications are going to be about things that we wish we had said or done, or about things we wish we had not said or done.”
And they’re also about something else, like the things we wish the other person had said or done, or not said or done.
But they can be about good things too. And it’s important to replay those.
Consider the happy scenario, where you share a kiss and a long hug with your spouse before you both depart for work. Later that day you learn he’s been killed in a freak work accident. Along with your heartache, you replay in your mind your last embrace, your loving goodbye, his joyful wave to you as he drives down the driveway. Those thoughts make you smile and bring gladness to your broken heart.
The reality of life is that we never know when our last encounters with someone will occur, and it’s more than likely that every loss brings with it unfinished details—words you wanted or planned to say, discussions you wanted to have, plans you were in the midst of making. Not procrastination but planned for events and get-togethers.
These types of things can leave you with a feeling of incompleteness in a relationship loss.
When others hinder your grief completion journey—
You may experience incomplete grieving when others cause or exaggerate your incompleteness.
Ever know someone who won’t allow you to express meaningful things to them? Your communication with them remains shallow or frustrating. We can’t force anyone to listen to us, and their refusal to hear or listen can leave us with incomplete feelings about them and the relationship.
Sometimes we’re fearful of being honest and saying things we know are emotionally loaded. We fear another person’s reaction, or their misunderstanding of your intentions.
We want to wait for the right time, but it never comes. And death ends the possibility of it ever coming.
We lose our nerve and never say what we need to say to the other person.
These events can leave us with incomplete emotions.
I can give you a personal example in my life that I still find frustrating. An event that left me with incomplete emotions.
For a reason I don’t understand, someone I considered a precious friend and loved like a sister decided “the season of our friendship had come to an end.”
That’s how she put it in the email she sent me. Not in person. Not in a phone call. She wouldn’t talk to me about why, explain her reasons, or tell me what I might have done to hurt her to cause that decision. I even asked her so I could apologize for how I might have hurt her.
She did tell me that we hadn’t communicated that much since she moved across the country, so I did get an inkling that she felt that, to remain good friends, I didn’t meet her frequent communication expectations.
It’s been a year since that happened, and I still experience incomplete grieving over it. My heart still cries about it. I miss her. But I feel as though she tied my hands and made my grieving difficult. I don’t think she acted loving or fair toward me.
And that makes me angry.
I feel as though her actions robbed me of the opportunity to be complete.
But her actions do not need to become the final say in this friendship ending. I need to heal, completely. So I’m going through the actions I need to take to complete that grieving, the actions I’m going to teach you in this incomplete grieving series. Actions I’ve taken before that helped me complete the grieving process and close open, festering wounds that took their toll on not only my mind but my body.
Goal of complete grieving—
Your goal is to discover those undelivered emotional communications occurring in both minor and major life events.
It’s the uncovering of all the undelivered communications, both large and small, that have emotional consequences for you. And it’s likely there is a heap of these undelivered communications that need unearthing and examination.
Where my former friend is concerned, I’m going to be exploring all of the unfinished communications and feelings I had when the relationship ended. I’m going to detail how the way she ended it makes me feel.
In the process I’m going to take into account the numerous overwhelming burdens in her life: the recent and unexpected death of a loved one; the illness of a beloved relative; the serious accident she incurred a year earlier that seemed to leave her mentally foggy and fearful of life.
In this specific instance, it’s a combination of juggling truth with love and mercy.
And in the process, I can’t tell myself I shouldn’t feel the way I feel. I already feel a certain way, have experienced certain feelings. Telling myself I shouldn’t feel them isn’t going to make them go away. Examining them, figuring out what to do with them, and then doing it will ease the burden and complete my grief.
And that’s the end goal.
Invitation—
Can you identify any relationships that ended by separation or death that still feel incomplete? If so, start jotting down those happy, sad, or unfinished events you wanted to continue, wanted to fix, or wanted to finish. You’ll use those in a future post to be able to complete your grieving.
NEXT WEEK we’ll dig deeper into incomplete grieving: how holding onto feelings may be stifling the grief completion process, and learning to express the feelings that will help us heal.
Until then, don’t be afraid to feel those feelings, and don’t let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t have them.
Blessings,
Andrea
Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer and senior-ordained chaplain. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
A LOT of people ask how long grief will last, when will it finally be over.
When will the pain end?
How we answer those questions depends upon how we approach grief and the recovery process caused by the grieving experience. The recovery process should lead to completion of grief.
How we handle the fallout of loss and the accompanying pain is what’s important.
Because if we don’t handle the loss well, it can lead to incomplete grief.
And that’s the important subject we’ll be exploring for the next few weeks.
What’s really behind all that grief pain?
When you’re deep into grief, unspeakable pain is your constant companion. No matter what you do, it seldom lets up. You just know the pain is never going to go away; you’re going to have to live with this the rest of your life.
If someone tries to tell you things will eventually get better, you don’t see how that’s possible. You don’t believe them. And you may be angered that they even made the comment.
It’s true, though. Things do and will get better—if you can identify the sources of emotional energy contributing to all that pain.
While there are some deaths—like grandparents, friends, and even siblings—that we can rebound better and more quickly from, other deaths leave us paralyzed and stuck.
The key is asking the right questions to identify what’s causing the emotions and then providing answers to those questions.
Key grief recovery questions—
We all look back over relationships and ask ourselves internal questions about them. The answers can help us complete the grief healing process.
One key question to ask yourself is:
What makes this death or loss different from others?
Was there something about the relationship that made it special? Was there “unfinished business” that will never be completed?
And we can go further with other important questions, like:
Are there things you wished would have been different about the relationship?
What could have been better?
Was there something more you would have liked to see fulfilled?
In my case, in the death of my daughter during an emergency delivery in the fifth month of pregnancy, I had a lot of emotions.
I’d spent five months with my daughter as she grew in my body, feeling her move. And I was seriously ill with morning sickness soon after the beginning of the pregnancy—so ill I couldn’t keep food down and had to undergo home IV therapy and intra-muscular anti-nausea treatment shots.
But I recovered from that and was just starting to enjoy the second trimester when tragedy struck, and our precious Victoria had to be taken too soon to survive outside my womb.
For a little over five months, I’d focused on my growing baby, wondering about what the baby would be like. Wondering if the little one was a boy or girl. Dreaming. Making plans. Mentally designing the nursery.
Then one night it all abruptly ended. My dreams and hopes were snatched away.
One of the things I wrote on the death announcements I sent out was: “Our dreams are certainly going to miss her—“
And that’s where I could have started the grief recovery process, writing down what I wished had been different, better or more.
Of course, I wish it didn’t turn out the way it did. That Victoria wouldn’t have died, or I would have been able to carry her further into the pregnancy and given her a better chance at life.
I wish I had better medical care. That the doctors would have responded to my concerns and to the concern of the ultrasound technician who picked up the problem during an examination. I wish they had been more concerned about the baby and me than the money they were trying to make and save.
I wish I could have had more time with her after her birth.
Victoria’s death had abruptly ended my hopes, dreams and expectations for our life together, as mother and daughter, and for our family’s life as a foursome. It killed my dreams of having a little girl to dress in frilly dresses and hair pinned into pigtails.
It’s important to remember that all these questions are critical to explore because hopes, dreams, and expectations happen in all relationships—even relationships that struggled or fell short; the ones that weren’t so great.
When we speak of grief, and grief recovery, we need to use these grief recovery terms:
“different, better, more;” and
“broken hopes, dreams, and expectations.”
They need to become part of our grief recovery language.
Communicating your grief—
When you’re first thrown into the grieving process, the emotions and myriad of them seem overwhelming and suffocating. You don’t know what to do with all the painful, sometimes incoherent thoughts.
In order to heal and recover, we need to be able to identify and communicate what’s going on within us. What the source is behind those complex feelings and thoughts.
When we do that, we gain control and reclaim a sense of purpose in life.
We can say to ourselves: I know how I feel. Now what do I need to do about it?
And that’s what we’ll be exploring in the next several weeks of posts.
What we can do about those feelings.
Invitation—
Is there any grief you feel you haven’t worked through or fully recovered from? Would it help to ask these questions we’ve covered today:
What feelings am I experiencing about this grief and why?
What makes this loss different from others I’ve experienced?
What do I wish would have been different?
What could have been better?
What did I want more of?
I encourage you to start exploring those questions and jotting down answers to them. You might be surprised at what you learn, and what relief you gain from the process and learning.
I encourage you to explore and ask yourself these questions. To become actively engaged in moving forward into grief recovery.
NEXT WEEK we’ll look at incomplete grief, what it is and how to avoid living with it.
Until then, remember that the grief process is normal, and that there can be a full life on the other side of it.
Blessings,
Andrea
Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer and senior-ordained chaplain. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
I’M WILLING TO BET you’ve heard this saying before: Time heals all wounds.
But does it, really?
And does time heal grief, or the pain that accompanies it?
Or your question might be: how long does grief last?
While time does, eventually, alter the wound, we must be careful not to confuse time healing a wound with a wound healing within time.
Time alone and on its own does not heal a wound, or grief.
So what does time do?
While time does reduce the immediate pain associated with a loss, we can’t expect all pain to subside when a certain amount of time—a certain, pre-set number of days—passes.
But before we go deeper, let’s back up and get a quick overview of grief.
Anatomy of a grief—
A loss, especially a divorce or death of a loved one—can produce an overwhelming amount of pain—both emotional and physical—that causes an extreme amount of emotional energy.
This kind of loss causes a traumatic effect on the body—physically, emotionally and spiritually. And when it occurs, all components of our bodies are affected, and they need healing. Healing that can occur at different rates.
As the shock and its numbness start to wear off, they’re replaced by a reality of the loss. While that might seem, on the grief continuum, a lesser stress to the body, it can be just as traumatic.
Fear often sets in. The fear of never having the same family structure, of never being able to see the deceased person again, of all your dreams being shattered, of this new reality being permanent.
And fear puts a lot of stress on the body.
After the reality of my dad’s death set in, I started experiencing fear that evolved into panic attacks. When my mind realized the finality of his passing—that he was really gone and never coming back—it rebelled and panicked. It took a lot of meditation, breathing exercises and down time to heal from that stage.
But my sadness did not necessarily lessen because of the passage of time. And trying to keep busy enough so that more time would pass and I would heal more would not have been a good prescription.
Ten years later I still think of things I’d love to share with him, decisions and questions I’d like to have his input in. I’d love to hear his laugh, his corny jokes (he thought he was pretty funny), and watch him do crafts with my husband and boys.
The fact that those things won’t ever happen saddens me. But the acute pain is no longer there. Just the melancholy of the reality. And there is some lightheartedness at the joyful memories of those corny jokes and crafty gatherings.
A stark view of our society and grief—
It’s very telling, and depressing, that companies are likely to give you more time off for a broken bone or surgery recovery than they would for bereavement. Six weeks versus three days, usually.
What does that say about our priorities?
Six weeks to heal a broken bone.
Three days to heal a broken heart.
Just how, following the death of a loved one, do you regain your equilibrium in three days?
Why do we expect grieving people to instantly recover from such devastating blows, such injury to their hearts and every aspect of their lives?
What does it mean to “get over” a death?
You may have seen the list put out my psychological or sociology associations putting time limit expectations on certain stressors and losses.
Often they’ll say that the death of a relative or friend takes two years to get over, and the death of a parent or spouse takes a year. And for the parents who’ve lost children?
They might tell you that you never really do recover from the death of a child.
But what do “recover” and “get over” mean?
Getting over seems to imply “forgetting.” Which we all know we could never do about anyone close to us dying. Especially a child.
And just because someone may still feel sadness, (I know I still do twenty-seven years later about the death of my daughter, Victoria), does not mean that person “hasn’t gotten over” the loss.
Like feeling happy, sadness is a normal part of life. Being sad years later shouldn’t be used as an indictment against someone who expresses it.
And when you feel as though society has put an arbitrary number—time limit—on grieving, you start feeling abnormal if you haven’t met that standard.
Time is not an active force with the power to heal. Time itself doesn’t have the power to do anything.
We’ve got to bury the notion that if you just wait long enough that you’ll be fixed.
The danger behind thinking you’ll never get over it—
There is a danger in thinking or believing you’ll never get over someone or something. Why?
Because when you believe you’ll never get over the death of a loved one, you convince yourself to stop trying to recover. You may even stop living. After all, why bother going on if you’re never going to feel better than you do today, drowning in this horrible gutting pain?
Using different words and descriptions to bring healing—
Instead of telling ourselves, and others, that we or they won’t ever get over something, we need to change our language.
We won’t ever forget our loved one, but if we take an active role in our grief recovery, we will be able to hang on to our fond memories without having to worry about those memories turning painful over and over again.
After our recovery and healing completion, we’ll be able to return to a fruitful life of meaning. And although our life will be much different, it can—and will—be good and enjoyable.
It won’t look like it immediately after the loss, but when you take active steps to recover—just as you would after letting a broken bone set and heal—you will be able to move forward.
Yet even with a broken bone you don’t return to “normal” as soon as the splint or cast is removed. You’re likely fatigued throughout the healing process. The body requires extra nutrients and sleep to heal properly. Disuse causes the muscle under the cast to atrophy. When the cast or splint is removed, you need to recondition the limb or joint, regain the muscle strength and coordination that was lost.
That process can take a long time and progress in fits and starts—two feet forward and then one foot backward. It’s a day-by-day re-assessment. And other factors can hamper your healing.
The same is true for the emotional and spiritual damage and recovery we face after a loss. We shouldn’t expect ourselves to jump right back into life. If we do, we’re likely to re-injure ourselves, or set our recovery back. In my exuberance to return to physical activity, I’ve been guilty of pushing the physical limits too soon and setting myself back.
And I was guilty of doing the same thing when trying to “recover” from Victoria’s death. It didn’t work out too well.
I thought if I stayed busy enough, and enough time passed, I’d “get over it,” and life would resume without me having to work on healing.
If I’d only been more patient with myself, more understanding. More in tune with my emotions. I would have healed better and more fully.
Don’t rank your relationships when grieving—
Since every relationship is unique, it’s impossible—and unwise—to try to rank their importance and attach a grief-meter to them.
I’ve heard stories of young people who had nannies while they were growing up and became more emotionally attached to their nannies than their busy parents. When the nanny dies, they’re devastated—more devastated than when their parents die.
The nannies weren’t blood relation, but they might as well have been.
Blood is not always thicker than water, nor does it always mean a closer, more significant and meaningful relationship.
When we grieve, we grieve our special and unique relationship with the person who died.
You set a trap for yourself when you try to compare or rank your loss.
Every loss is different. Every loss is individual. Every loss needs its own healing prescription.
Wrap up—
Try to resist the urge to think you have to recover from grief in a certain amount of time; that time will heal all your wounds.
Doing so leaves you vulnerable to not completing your grief process, of expecting more. Of getting burned out and depressed over your perceived timeframe failure.
Everyone’s different. Every grief is different. Every loss requires unique healing and an individual road to recovery.
Don’t try to follow or adhere to someone else’s road.
Additional Resources—
For more information on grief and the healing and timetable process and fallacy, see these helpful sites:
Is there a grief you’re struggling with right now that you’ve put a healing timeframe on? What can you do to change your view or the limitations and expectations you’ve put on yourself. Or others?
Is there a grief from your past you haven’t fully healed from, that someone rushed you through?
Are you still experiencing sadness from memories of a loved one who passed on years ago and thought those feelings were “abnormal” or indicative of a grief not completed? Can you now recognize those emotions as normal and good, for the memory of your loved one?
NEXT WEEK we’ll start the process of moving from grief into recovery. You won’t want to miss this series. I know you’ll find it helpful for any grief you still need to recover from, grief that didn’t recover well, and for anyone near you struggling with grief.
See you then!
Andrea
*Some material in this post was found in Grief Recovery Institute resources.
Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer and senior-ordained chaplain. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
I know you already know this, but 2020 has been an unbelievable, and rough year. Pent-up emotions unleashed, brutality on display over and over and over again in living color, anger and resentment driving people to vengeful behavior.
Within and amidst all this chaos, how can and does one find peace?
Not temporary peace that ebbs and flows with beautiful or ugly reality, but the kind of peace that comes and stays and quiets your heart in the midst of pain, injustice, and grief.
Perfect peace.
Dr. Don Colbert recently had a great blog post about finding peace and purpose in these unsettling times, and I’d like to use some of his post highlight concrete ways to find peace right now. Some of them we’ve recently discussed that I’d like to re-emphasize.
Read on to discover 10 tips to finding peace in the chaos.
Name the source of your anger, fear, anxiety, pain—
It’s okay to be angry about something, or with someone. But often we feel angry about “something” without really knowing what that “something” is.
A big part of being able to find peace is naming the source of your anger, fear, anxiety or pain. Naming it gives you opportunity to confront it and understand it.
This is where journaling comes in, which we’ve talked a lot of about in the last several posts. Not only is it okay to journal, it’s healing to do so.
Thankfully, our Heavenly Father isn’t put off by our anger. He even demonstrated His own righteous anger when He cleared the temple of what He called “a den of thieves.” Thieves that made it impossible for people to reach and worship Him.
And the Bible is full of verbalized complaints, anger, frustration, pain and questions. Just read the Psalms, and Job.
Name the source to gain control over it. Just ranting and crying out to God about it helps unload it and qualify it. While He may not agree with your limited assessment about the cause, He will listen and guide you in your thinking and healing.
Remember who is ultimately in control—
Although we certainly are surprised, God isn’t surprised by any of this. And that’s good for us, because He alone knows why it’s happening, (He sees what’s really going on behind the scenes and reads hearts), and He alone is the One who can give direction for leading us into greener pastures everyone can enjoy, rest in and feast upon.
It does a turmoil-filled heart good to remind itself of that.
If you want answers, go to the source of the right questions. The One who can give you the results you seek. And talk and listen to Him in prayer and meditation.
As a friend of ours likes to say, “Pray and pray often.”
He loves you and wants to hear from you. Often.
Focus on God’s power and promises—
The Bible is loaded with reminders and proofs of God’s power, promises and provisions, and it’s important to pick out a few verses to remind yourself of that.
Some of the passages Dr. Colbert presented are good ones to keep in mind.
“…be anxious about nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).
“Jesus said unto him, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets’” (Matt 22:34-40).
“The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:8-12).
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him” (John 3:16-17).
Another passage I’ve used as a foundation for my life is Joshua 1:9:
“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”
But the passage before it sets up this command, and it’s worth noting:
“This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
Do you see it?
There is an if-so-then-that set up. If you read God’s word, meditate in it and try to commit your life to it, then you’ll be more able to prosper and find success in life.
Does hard work always guarantee success? No, because evil works all around us, seeking our failure. And our fallen human condition makes us broken and weak.
We are big sinners in need of a big savior. And we have one in Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah.
One last passage I’ll note that is particularly pertinent right now:
“He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God” Micah 6:8)?
How much different would our world and lives look if we:
Loved the Lord our God with all our hearts, minds, and souls?
Loved our neighbors as we love ourselves?
Didn’t melt down in anxiety about anything, but, instead, took all of our anxieties to the Lord and prayed continually—with thanksgiving—about it?
Remember that God loves the WHOLE WORLD (that He created), and everyone in it and made the ultimate sacrifice to have a relationship with us?
Remember the Lord is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love toward us?
Act toward others the same way He acts toward us?
Use these truths to pray through and out of your anxiety—
As the famous Nazi concentration campus survivor, Corrie Ten Boom, said,
“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.”
Prayer fills out hearts and minds with strength. It can restore our joy.
Take your thoughts captive—
You can talk yourself into almost anything, including fear and anxiety. So it’s important to be able to talk yourself out of them, into gratitude, contentment and joy.
Again, prayer can do that, as you take every time and energy-wasting thought to God and ask Him to do something about it. Ask Him to remove it. Give it away to Him to deal with.
He’ll know what to do with it. You can trust Him on this.
Take action in your own life and on behalf of others—
Nothing stops you from spending too much time thinking about yourself and wallowing in your own problems or negativity than to re-focus on others and their needs.
Put your energies into positive actions.
There are a lot of injustices in this world. Look around and identify one you want to pour your energies into and rectify.
What can you write about? What can you volunteer to do to help alleviate suffering and pain?
If you’re unsure, pray about that too. God will open your eyes to needs in your community. He’ll use your gifts to work to right wrongs, to stand up against prejudice and greed and all manner of evil.
And while you’re going about it, make sure you pray for the people you’re standing against. It will calm and open your heart toward them. Help diffuse tensions and open up lines of communication.
It’s very difficult to be angry with someone you’re praying for.
Keep a gratitude journal—
Every day write down 3 things you’re grateful for; or at least thank God for them in prayer. Doing that opens your heart to receive joy and peace for the good things in your life.
And not stress so much on the things you don’t have and wish you did.
Make sure you do your deep breathing exercises—
As part of your daily meditation, make sure you do your breathing exercises that I highlight in this post
People who do these breathing exercises and meditate experience more peace and gratitude, have less anxiety, and live longer.
Make sure you nourish your body—
Keep your body nourished with good, natural food, the right amount of sleep, fresh air, and exercise.
All these ingredients are critical to good brain function and emotional, physical and spiritual health.
Spend quality (and quantity) time with loved ones—
Even though it’s more difficult right now, make sure you carve out time for loved ones. Doing so releases the hormone oxytocin, a natural stress-relieving chemical.
Petting your cat or dog does the same thing, as does looking into someone’s eyes, (even your dog or cat’s eyes), receiving or giving a hug, laughing with someone. Sitting close to them. Touching one another.
Even though it’s difficult to do right now, make good, strong eye contact with people. Even with a mask on, you can usually tell when their eyes sparkle from a smile, a kind word, a joyful encounter.
And I’ve gotten braver, as I’ve hugged several friends I hadn’t seen in months or over a year. Mask on, I’ve put my whole strength into my brief hug, and I’ve enjoyed a enveloping hug in return. Just giving and receiving one makes you laugh with joy and relief.
Am I foolish and reckless for doing it? Perhaps. But I’ve decided that life really isn’t worth living without a hug or two; and—especially because one of my love languages is touch, and I grew up in the land of hugs (Hawaii)—my mental and emotional health require it.
So I hug, while praying that God will protect me from deadly viruses and germs.
As you go forward this week, I want to leave you with two things that have lifted my spirit and given me more joy and peace.
Lockdown
Yes there is fear.
Yes there is isolation.
Yes there is panic buying.
Yes there is sickness.
Yes there is even death.
But,
They say that in Wuhan, after so many years of noise,
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet,
The sky is no longer thick with fumes
But blue and grey and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi
People are singing to each other
across the empty squares,
keeping their windows open
so that those who are alone
may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland
is offering free meals and delivery to the
housebound.
Today a young woman I know
is busy spreading fliers with her number
through the neighbourhood
So that the elders may have someone to call
on.
Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and
Temples
are preparing to welcome
and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary.
All over the world people are looking at their
neighbours in a new way.
All over the world people are waking up to a
new reality.
To how big we really are.
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.
Love.
So we pray and we remember that
Yes there is fear.
But there does not have to be hate.
Yes there is isolation.
But there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes there is panic buying.
But there does not have to be meanness.
Yes there is sickness.
But there does not have to be disease of the
soul.
Yes there is even death.
But there can always be a rebirth of love.
Wake to the choices you make as to how to
live now.
Today, breathe.
Listen, behind the factory noises of your
panic
The birds are singing again.
The sky is clearing,
Spring is coming,
And we are always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows of your soul
And though you may not be able
to touch across the empty square,
Sing.
Fr. Richard Hendrick, OFM
March 13, 2020
Until next week, when we’ll continue our grief myth discussion,
may you be filled to overflowing with joy, peace, and abundant blessings!
Andrea
Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, senior-ordained chaplain, and award-winning inspirational writer. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer and senior-ordained chaplain. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to thrive — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
